Leo

Year 16, Day 265 - 9/21/24 - Movie #4,850

BEFORE: Film #350 for the year, it's kind of the last marker before I get to the horror film and the endgame for Year 16. Still have not run out of movies, because it seems there are more of them than ever, and they're all available SOMEWHERE on streaming or occasionally on the Dark Web (I try to go there as infrequently as possible, but you know, the chain needs to be maintained).  So far the plan is holding, numerically I'm set to hit Christmas right on the button, with a great film I've been looking forward to that will close out the year.  But, you know, plans sometimes change, still I believe in my linking skills and double-checking everything, so I believe I'm headed in the right direction and that's where I'll land.  

Horror movies start in ten days, so don't say I didn't warn you, it may get really scary around here, but just remember if we lose any sleep we can all just catch up in No-Movie November. Adam Sandler carries over from "Spaceman". 

THE PLOT: A 74-year-old lizard named Leo and his turtle friend decide to escape from the terrarium of a Florida school classroom, where they have been living for decades. 

AFTER: Damn, another school-based film ended up on a weekend.  But the film is about the kids in fifth grade taking the class pet home on the weekends, so maybe I can allow watching this on a Saturday, most of the action in the movie therefore takes place on weekends. 

The hook for the film is that all animals can talk, but they've all agreed to not talk to humans.  Can you blame them?  Still, you'd think that at some point an animal who can talk would have, you know, said something, like "Don't eat me!" or "Please adopt me from this shelter!" Right?  So in a sense this film borrows liberally from the "Toy Story" movies, where the toys can move and talk, they just don't do it when humans are around.  

Sure, talking animals are a staple of animated films, especially the old Disney ones, but isn't it really a storytelling crutch?  It immediately tells me that this film is not set in the real world, but in an alternate one where animals have the power of speech - but kids are probably so used to this in animated movies and TV shows that they don't even think about it, they just accept it.  But you can see how MAYBE this could have been a film about the only two animals that could talk, and MAYBE they gained this ability by living in a grade school classroom, and seeing the same lessons taught again and again, day after day, year after year.  Maybe this a plot point early in the production of "Leo", then the writers realized it just wouldn't work, because Leo the lizard ends up outside, far from the school and he needs to be able to talk to the other animals there.

The story really has to bend itself over backwards to allow Leo to go home with different students - I guess maybe schools just don't do this any more, certainly not since COVID, or maybe it resulted in too many dead classroom pets.  So in this story the regular teacher is pregnant and starting to show, so the kids get a permanent substitute for the year, and the new teacher is very old-school and revives the practice of taking home the pet, because it teaches kids about responsibility.  OK, but a few NITPICK POINTS here - Mrs. Salinas didn't just suddenly realize she was four months pregnant, so why wasn't this situation taken into account before the school year began?  There probably would have been more time to find a better replacement than Ms. Malkin.  And changing teachers wouldn't make something against school policy OK again, so either taking home the class pet is allowed or it isn't, and wouldn't be affected by a teacher change.  

For that matter, why is fifth grade the last grade in elementary school?  Is this different in various states and cities across the country?  In my hometown SIXTH grade was as far as you could go in grade school, and junior high was seventh and eighth grades.  Do some towns put sixth grade in "middle school" or junior high?  What happens if a kid moves from one town to another, in-between fifth and sixth grade, and essentially has to "finish" grade school twice?  Can we get some consistency in our country's educational system, please? Or am I just remembering a system that no longer exists? 

Anyway, Leo has such a wealth of knowledge from watching the same fifth grade classroom for the last 74 years that he's an expert in child psychology and figuring out what clique each student belongs to, also giving them advice that cuts right to the heart of their problem or anxiety.  There's the kid who talks too much, the kid with over-protective parents who have a drone following him around, the spoiled rich girl, the class clown and even the class bully.  Leo enjoys all of the attention he gets after solving their problems, but he's also told each kid that they're the only one that he talks to. What could possibly go wrong there?   He also ends up talking to Ms. Malkin, who never accomplshed her dream of being a REAL teacher, not just a sub. 

When the kids all feel confident and they've won the History Fair (weird, the original goal was to win the Academicathlon, what changed over the course of the film?) Ms. Malkin wants to take all of the credit for their success, so she drives Leo out to the Everglades and leaves him there.  Since he's never had to survive in the wild, his chances, well, they're not good considering all the hungry alligators there. This is ironic because Leo always dreamed of going to the Everglades, and he finds that it's not all it's cracked up to be.  Good message for the kids - never leave home, where you're comfortable, just keep living with your parents in your old room as long as you can. Someday you'll own their house!

The fifth graders give up their trip to Magic Land Park when they learn that Leo is down in the Everglades and might need their help.  Another great message for the kids, a field trip is a great time to ditch the chaperones, hijack the school bus and take it to another destination that your parents didn't approve!  Hey, if it saves the life of just ONE lizard, isn't that worth putting the entire class of kids in danger? 

This film has a lot of heart, though, like somebody really THOUGHT about the problems kids might be having today and came up with some solutions or words of advice that could help a lot of kids out there in the audience.  And, a lot of the film is in the form of songs, so that must have been a challenge.  However, as a man in his fifties, I simply cannot approve the song where a class of 10-year olds is feeling nostalgic about the times when they were nine, eight, seven years old and so on. NO NO NO, kids at that age are not allowed to be wistfully nostalgic about their childhoods!  That just doesn't happen until they're at least 40!  

Also starring the voices of Bill Burr (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Cecily Strong (last seen in "The Female Brain"), Jason Alexander (last seen in "Yogi Berra: It Ain't Over"), Rob Schneider (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), John Farley (ditto), Allison Strong (last seen in "The Week Of"), Jo Koy (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?"), Sadie Sandler (last seen in "The Wrong Missy"), Jackie Sandler (ditto), Nick Swardson (ditto), Chris Titone (ditto), Jonathan Loughran (ditto), Sunny Sandler (also carrying over from "Spaceman"), Coulter Ibanez, Bryant Tardy (last seen in "Logan"), Corey J., Ethan Smigel (also last seen in "The Week Of"), Roey Smigel (ditto), Rebecca Vigil (ditto), Christian Capozzoli (ditto), Katie Hartman (ditto), TienYa Safko, Gloria Manning, Carson Minniear, Reese Lores, Benjamin Bottani, Aidan Liam Phillipson, Heidi Gardner (last heard in "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"), Robert Smigel (last seen in "The King of Staten Island"),  Lileina Joy, Stephanie Hsu (last seen in "Everything Everywhere All at Once"), Ryun Yu, Nicholas Turturro (last seen in "Malcolm X"), Janie Haddad Tompkins (last seen in "Unicorn Store"), Paul Brittain (last seen in "Killing Gunther"), Tiffany Topol, Dan Reitz, Sunita Param, Sonya Leslie (last seen in "People Like Us"), Germar Terrell Gardner (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Rose Abdoo (last seen in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), Alex Quijano (last seen in "Larry Crowne"), Sheila Carrasco, Doug Dale (last heard in "Hotel Transylvania 2"), Jonny Solomon (ditto), David Wachtenheim, Robert Marianetti, Chris Kattan (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Nora Wyman, Blake Clark (last seen in "That's My Boy"), Joel Marsh Garland (last seen in "Rocket Science"), Noah Robbins (last seen in "Villains"), Frankie Figliozzi, Kyra Wachtenheim, Aliza Pelavin.

RATING: 6 out of 10 bobble-head dolls

Spaceman

Year 16, Day 264 - 9/20/24 - Movie #4,849

BEFORE: Sure, Netflix keeps recommending this film to me, but what does that even MEAN at this point?  The streaming service's recommendation engines should know by now that I'll watch just about anything, right?  So I can assume that they're just throwing everything at me that THEY want me to watch, for whatever reason. I've already screwed up the one on my wife's Amazon Prime account, she gets some real wacko recommendations and she KNOWS I'm to blame, because if it were just based on her history, it would only suggest more baking shows.  But if she gets suggested a comedy about lesbians being chased by criminals because there's a mysterious suitcase in their trunk, well, I'm going to hear about it, aren't I? 

Kunal Nayyar carries over from "Trolls Band Together".  

THE PLOT: Six months into his solo mission on the edge of the solar system, an astronaut concerned with the state of his life back on Earth is helped by an ancient creature he discovers in the bowels of his ship.  

AFTER: This is the story of a man who's sent to the edge of our solar system to investigate a strange phenomenon, and what that trip does to him, because of the isolation and loneliness of this one-man mission.  You could say he's set up to fail from the start because it's a solo mission - who can spend that much time by themself and not go completely bonkers?  To make matters worse, his wife stops answering his communications and he fears the relationship is in jeopardy AND he's also got to read sponsored content into his feed as part of his duties on the ship.  Hey, space travel is expensive, somebody's got to cover the cost, plus it's not a NASA mission, it's some kind of Russian or maybe Czech space agency.  

Now, there are two explanations for what happens next - one is that Jakub, our cosmonaut, has a mental breakdown, or perhaps his brain is affected by the radiation from the phenomenon that he's investigating.  If this is the case, then everything seen in the second half of the film is perhaps not meant to be taken seriously.  Perhaps he's seeing hallucinations again, caused either by his brain or by the radiation's effect on his brain.  Nobody really knows how the human body or brain could be damaged during deep-space travel, because it hasn't happened yet.  

The other option is that the creature he sees come aboard his spaceship is 100% real, and honestly I don't know if this option is any better.  Either way there is (or appears to be) an alien creature that approaches Jakub and speaks to him, calling him "skinny human" and asking questions about the nature of Earth and what it means to be human.  The only correct answer here, when dealing with a potentially real alien, should be "Well, they're all crazy, so whatever you do, don't go there, and I know you didn't ask, but they taste terrible, just saying.  Don't eat them, you wouldn't like it and you'd probably die, they're so full of chemicals and such."

I'm inclined to go with option #1, the crazy option, because what are the odds that an alien creature would look almost exactly like a certain Earth creature (I'm not spoiling it here) only more giant-sized?  Also, Jakub does not appear to have the most basic human reactions when dealing with such a creepy-looking giant-sized creature, which would be to start screaming and immediately try to kill it with fire?  Since he does not do that, I'm guessing that the creature is a manifestation from his own brain, and also the creature speaks English, what are the odds?  

OK, but if you support theory #2, that the alien creature is real, then you have to account for its ability to communicate, it may be telepathic, for example, so it's not speaking out loud but directly into Jakub's brain.  Could happen?  The creature also has fun poking through Jakub's memories from childhood and his early relationship with his wife, so if it can do that, surely it can speak telepathically too, right?   But it wants to know, to learn, to understand, not to eat Jakub or suck his brain out.  Would such a peaceful creature have traveled through black holes and across space and time just to kill and destroy?  Well, yeah, probably, so it's almost definitely a hallucination, then, because it seems to have peaceful intent.  Also, it would love to know what chocolate tastes like, since they don't have it on his home planet.  

Jakub names the creature Hanus, and through their conversations and Hanus's scrolling through Jakub's memories, a bond forms between the two, and really, that wouldn't have been possible if Jakub had been freaked out by the creature and threw it out an airlock or trapped it in a life-pod or just set it on fire.  (Again, that would have been a justifiable human reaction, based on its appearance alone.). If we continue the "crazy astronaut" theory just a bit more, perhaps this was all some form of therapy that Jakub needed, one that would help him remember the good times with his wife, before they grew bored with each other or her miscarriage drove some kind of emotional wedge between them.  The space agency's excuses for why Lenka isn't returning his calls were getting pretty far-fetched, after all. 

Look, maybe we have to go back and take another look at the "Alien" franchise - perhaps in that first movie the alien on board their ship was just trying to find a way to communicate with humans, to figure them out, see what makes them tick by, you know, climbing inside through their face-holes and creating little baby xenomorphs inside them.  How was it to know that the birthing process for humans would be so violent?  Or that only female humans had the right equipment to bring a child to term?  The birth was never meant to take place via the male stomach, but come on, what other option was there?  Guys, this changes everything, the first "Alien" film is not a horror movie at all, it's a weird twisted sci-fi rom-com!  

The phenomenon that is new to the solar system is called Chopra, and it's a colorful collection of dust and particles, but Hanus refers to it as "The Beginning".  Good luck trying to predict what happens when Jakub's ship finally gets there, but hey, at least we know he's not going to face it alone, he's got his imaginary (?) alien friend to help him through whatever he encounters there.  Yeah, I've already started a list of the weirdest movies I've seen this year, we'll go through the whole breakdown right after Christmas - but there have been some doozies, haven't there? 

In the end, this played out like some weird mix of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Interstellar", with a bit of, I don't know, not "Alien", more like "E.T." thrown in.  Yet it feels oddly original, so maybe it's safe to say that there's never really been a movie quite like this before - but on the other hand, maybe there's a reason for that. Possible tag-line; "In space, no one can hear you slowly go insane."

Also starring Adam Sandler (last seen in "I Am Chris Farley"), Carey Mulligan (last seen in "Saltburn"), Isabella Rossellini (last seen in "The Wolfpack"), Lena Olin (last seen in "Night Falls on Manhattan"), Petr Papanek, Marian Roden, Zuzana Stivinova, Sunny Sandler (last seen in "The Wrong Missy"), John Flanders (last seen in "Moonwalkers"), Jessica Bechynova and the voice of Paul Dano (last seen in "Dumb Money"). 

RATING: 5 out of 10 requested repairs for the toilet module

Trolls Band Together

Year 16, Day 263 - 9/19/24 - Movie #4,848

BEFORE: Well, I watched the previous "Trolls" film so I love continuing with a franchise, but I just have not given the films in this series very good scores, but who knows, that could change.  The rating is a very subjective thing, it can be affected by my day, how tired I am, what I had to eat, what's going on my life.  It's probably more of a crap-shoot than I care to admit, but then again, sometimes a film is just crap. We'll see. 

Anna Kendrick carries over again from "Self Reliance". 

FOLLOW-UP TO: "Trolls World Tour" (Movie #3,933)

THE PLOT: Poppy discovers that Branch was once part of the boy band BroZone with his brothers, Floyd, John Dory, Spruce and Clay.  When Floyd is kidnapped, Branch and Poppy embark on a journey to reunite his other two brothers and rescue Floyd.  

AFTER: If you thought that the previous installment in the "Trolls" franchise was terrible, well, it's more of the same. Did you expect differently, that the films would suddenly get BETTER? Just not gonna happen.  At least there was a point to the first film, the Trolls were being eaten by the Bergens and Poppy set out to somehow change that, which she did.  The second film was pretty stupid, like all of the Troll Realm was shown to be divided by music genres, but ones from OUR world, translated into the fantasy world.  What we knew as Trolls in the first film turned out to be Pop Trolls, but there were also Techno Trolls and Country Trolls and Smooth Jazz Trolls, which was all just WAY too complicated. 

The third film did away with some of that nonsense from the second film, but instead decided to focus on Boy Band Music, which, come on, is just NOT an improvement.  It's way too late to re-think this, and I never thought I'd say this, but could we PLEASE bring back the country music and the K-Pop?  

Poppy talks just WAY too fast here, like, does someone want to check on Anna Kendrick, can we make sure she's OK?  I'm getting worried that she's going to burn herself out, talking and living so much faster than us normal humans.  It makes the characters she plays SUPER annoying. 

Story-wise, this is nonsense piled on top of more nonsense.  Trolls have boy bands?  That's a human thing, right?  Why do the trolls have this, and was it just in the Troll Kingdom's past, or is it still a thing?  BroZone is a terrible name for a band, in the fantasy world OR the real world. And the terrible song titles are supposed to be funny, but that doesn't mean they aren't also still terrible. Poppy finds out that her boyfriend Branch used to be in the band BroZone when he was a baby, and he has four brothers who were also in the singing group, but after some creative differences they went their separate ways. 

One brother, John Dory, shows up in Troll Kingdom in search of Branch, because their brother Floyd has been kidnapped by two spoiled teen musicans who could somehow suck out his musical essence and become talented singers.  Jeez, the rules of this Troll universe just seem to change to fit whatever story somebody wants to tell, don't they?  I mean, nobody in the first two films was sucking musical talent out of Trolls, and now, suddenly that's a thing?  Also, who are these "people" that look like really stretchy humans, where do they fit in to the Trollverse, and also Branch's brother Spruce (or Bruce) is married to some characters that look like renegades from a Dr. Seuss book, who or what are THEY?  

Anyway, please remind me to never watch any more "Trolls" films, because I may forget and watch a fourth one if they make a fourth one.  But honestly, I'd rather not.  I hereby un-obligate myself from needing to ever watch another film in this franchise.  They're all terrible, besides, I don't have any kids and I've made up for all of my movie-watching sins several times over by now.  So I'm walking away with a clean slate, I think, but please, no more of this. 

Also starring the voices of Justin Timberlake (last heard in "Trolls World Tour"), Anderson .Paak (ditto), Kunal Nayyar (ditto), Kenan Thompson (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Walt Dohrn (last heard in "The Bad Guys"), Ron Funches (last seen in "80 for Brady"), David Fynn (last seen in "The Mauritanian"), Kevin Michael Richardson (last heard in "Minions: The Rise of Gru"), Eric André (last heard in "Sing 2"), Daveed Diggs (last heard in "The Little Mermaid" (2023)), Kid Cudi (last seen in "Don't Look Up"), Troye Sivan (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Camila Cabello, Zosia Mamet (last seen in "Under the Silver Lake"), Amy Schumer (last seen in "Unfrosted"), Andrew Rannells (last seen in "A Simple Favor"), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"), Zooey Deschanel (last seen in "Eulogy"), Aino Jawo (also last heard in "Trolls World Tour"), RuPaul Charles (last seen in "Little Richard: I Am Everything"), Dillon Francis (last seen in "Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse"), GloZell Green (last seen in "The Wedding Ringer"), Patti Harrison (last seen in "Together Together"), Lance Bass (last seen in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry"), JC Chasez (last seen in "Opening Night"), Joey Fatone (last seen in "Matinee"), Chris Kirkpatrick, Iris Dohrn (last heard in "Trolls"), Nina Bakshi (ditto), Melissa Mabie, James Ryan (last heard in "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish"), Tim Heitz, Ryan Naylor (last heard in "The Croods: A New Age"), Nick Fletcher (last seen in "The Wife"), Secunda Wood, Roger Craig Smith (last heard in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Jakari Fraser (ditto), Fred Tatasciore (last heard in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"), Nick Kishiyama, Kayla Melikian (last heard in "Raya and the Last Dragon"), Titus Blake, Nicole Lynn Evans (last heard in "Wish"), Felipe Vasquez. 

RATING: 2 out of 10 frosted tips

Self Reliance

Year 16, Day 262 - 9/18/24 - Movie #4,847

BEFORE: Getting closer to Movie #250 for the year, really at that point all that will be left to watch in Movie Year 16 will be a week of films in September, the October horror chain, and 14 films for November and December.  Really, it's going to be like "No Movie November" this time, because my Thanksgiving film is just going to be two films away from my Halloween film.  Seems like maybe a great time to take a vacation, which is exactly what we're planning to do. We're going to drive down to North Carolina to see my parents and my sister's family, and maybe we'll have an early Thanksgiving dinner with them, or something like it.  But we sure don't want to drive around Thanksgiving, because that's when everyone else is doing the exact same thing. So we'll do this the second full week of the month, and we'll be back in NYC a full 6 days before anyone else leaves for wherever they're going for the holiday, even if they're leaving a week early.  Then, when real Thanksgiving comes around, we're free to do whatever we want - last year we had a buffet meal in a literal mansion on Long Island that was just incredible.  I'm not giving out the specific location because I don't want word to get out.  But suffice it to say we do have a plan, or at least the concepts of a plan. 

Looking at the list again, maybe I'll watch 5 films in November, then 9 in December. Any way I slice it, there's going to be a lot of down-time in those 2 months.  Great, by then I could probably use another break.  Anna Kendrick carries over again from "Alice, Darling", and she's moving up in the ranks quite quickly.  But I think there are a few people who are in 3 or 4 or more horror movies, so they'll have the last chance to improve their stats for the year.  December will basically be Kevin Dillon, Mel Gibson, Emile Hirsch, Paul Rudd and done, I think. It's still 70 degrees out but I feel Christmas coming. 

THE PLOT: Given the opportunity to participate in a life or death reality game show, one man discovers there's a lot to live for. 

AFTER: Well, this film was certainly better than I expected, better than it's short synopsis made it sound.  I guess I was expecting something like "The Running Man", but it's nothing like that.  But it is a game where there are people trying to kill the participants - or are they?  Honestly it's a bit unclear what the true nature of the TV show is, because Jake is Tommy is sort of told a bit about how it works when he signs on, but then learns conflicting facts about the TV as time goes on.

The premise is that a participant will win a million dollars if he can survive for a month, and that there will be people playing the game who will be trying to kill him, but it's also possible that those people will be busy hunting the other players, so really, they may not ever get around to Tommy, really, what are the odds?  No, really, what are the odds, like how many other player are there?  Tommy wonders this too so he places a Craigslist ad to see if anyone else wants to talk about "the game" that nobody is supposed to be talking about.  The producers of the reality show (they're Dutch, or maybe Danish, so the show may not even ever AIR in the U.S.) also let slip that the killers will only approach when he is alone, they've been instructed to avoid collateral damage, it's an insurance thing I guess. So Tommy figures he's in the clear, he just needs to spend more time with friends and family members, then he'll always be safe.  It's a solid plan, except that he doesn't have any friends and his sisters and mother don't want to be any part of this, and also they think that Tommy is delusional.  

So Tommy hires a homeless (sorry, home-FREE) man to follow him around, he pays James in food at first, but promises him an apartment or something once he wins the million dollars.  More help comes when someone answers his ad, and Maddy says she's also playing the same game, so they figure if they just spend all their time together, they'll be in the clear.  Tommy figures that she's kind of cute in that Anna Kendrick-y kind of way, they hit it off so sure, why not spend all your time for the next 20 days with someone you just met five minutes ago?  There's some kind of dating show that works along these lines, right?  Just without the killers stalking the contestants.  There's a flaw in Tommy's logic, though, like spending time with another contestant might not make him as safe as he thinks, what if one killer just uses it as a chance to kill them both at the same time?  The film does explain this later on, so really, I can't call it as a NITPICK POINT.  

The production crew has been told to plant cameras everywhere that Tommy might go, and also to not be seen, so they come and go like ninjas.  Eventually the killers do show up, and they appear in strange and various forms, like a sumo wrestler or a Sinbad impersonator (the comedian, not the mythical sailor & adventurer) so sure enough, Tommy's life has become a nightmare, and honestly, it wasn't that great to begin with, he had an ex-girlfriend who broke up with him and he never really understood why, plus his father took off when he was 10 or 11, after they'd just spent a great day together, and he never really understood why that happened either. 

Since the title of the film doesn't really seem to apply any other way, I guess we can assume that Tommy gains self-reliance by being on the show, and maybe it's something he never had before?  He gains the ability to FINALLY knock on his ex's door and ask her about the break-up.  He learns to fight back when he's threatened, and he even gains enough confidence to finally confront his absent father.  Some of this is set up by the show and some of it is not, but since Tommy doesn't know for sure how "real" the show is, we're also left to wonder.  Are there really people trying to kill him, or is this all just an elaborate prank?  And if it's a prank, who's behind it? All we really know about them is that they have the ability to hire a former SNL star (no, not that one, think lower-scale) to give Tommy his instructions.  But they can't afford Ellen DeGeneres, just a low-rent look-alike.  

For the last few days, Tommy does what he maybe should have done in the first place, he hides in a settlement of homeless people living under a bridge.  This is a great cover, because nobody ever really sees these people, even if they do, they want to ignore them.  Well, at least Tommy's getting out there and meeting people, even if they don't have great hygiene, and by the end of the month, neither does he.  But it will all be worth it if he wins, right?

Really, this is phenomenal timing for me because the new season of "Survivor" starts tonight, so I may stay up and watch that after tonight's movie.  Also the season finale of "MasterChef" aired tonight, and next week we'll start up again with "The Masked Singer" and also "Hell's Kitchen".  It's a great time to be alive, peak TV, right?  Or is that over?  I still have to watch the Emmy Awards, which aired over the weekend, while I was busy.  I guess there's "Big Brother" going on too, and the "Golden Bachelorette" and "Dancing With the Stars" if you're into that.  We'll be too busy watching "Halloween Baking Championship" which started Monday and "Outrageous Pumpkins" at the end of this month.  Gotta get ready for October!

Look, I don't think they'll ever have a show on TV where people are hunted for sport, but you never know.  They're saying the S-word and the F-word on TV pretty regularly, now, and we never thought that would happen.  Never thought weed would be legal in so many states, but look where we find ourselves.  Wait, wasn't "Squid Game" a hit show on Netflix?  I forget, was that real or fake?  Does it even matter any more? 

Also starring Jake Johnson (last heard in "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse"), Andy Samberg (ditto), Natalie Morales (last seen in "The Little Things"), Mary Holland (last seen in "Unicorn Store"), Emily Hampshire (last seen in "Mother!"), Christopher Lloyd (last seen in "Senior Moment"), Biff Wiff (last seen in "Everything Everywhere All at Once"), Boban Marjanovic (last seen in "Hustle"), Eduardo Franco (last heard in Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken"), GaTa, Bjorn Johnson (last heard in "Paddleton"), John Hans Tester (last seen in "White House Down"), Daryl J. Johnson (last seen in "Superhero Movie"), Nancy Lenehan (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Jeff Kober (last seen in "Leave No Trace"), Eric Edelstein (last seen in "Jurassic World"), Ely Henry (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen 2"), Miriam Flynn (last seen in "For Keeps?"), Ilia Volok (last seen in "Hunter KIller"), Steven Littles, Tamra Brown, John Ponzio (last seen in "The Dark Half"), Karen Mauyama (Last seen in "Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar"), Sky Elobar (last seen in "I Do... Until I Don't"), Gloria Sandoval (last seen in "Chef"), Makini Manu, Theo Wilson, Thomas Vu, Lawrence Whitener with a cameo from Wayne Brady (last heard in "Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild"). 

RATING: 6 out of 10 references to Super Mario Bros. 

Alice, Darling

Year 16, Day 261 - 9/17/24 - Movie #4,846

BEFORE: Relationships are tricky sometimes, and categorizing movies about relationships can be even trickier.  I devote a whole month-plus every February to this topic - well, love in all its forms, really - and to keep the linking alive at the same time, I've been forced to expand the scope of the topic, and I've justified that by saying there's a down side to love sometimes, so films about "bad" or "unhappy" relationships have made the cut, like "The Boy Next Door" or "Swimfan".  I went back and forth on "Swimfan" a couple times, it was in, it was out, and the bottom line was that it wasn't getting watched as a result.  So in the end it was in. 

Now I face the flip-side of that dilemma, with another film that showcases an "unhealthy" relationship, it does connect to one other film on the romance/relationships list, so maybe I should save it for February - but just having one link is not really enough, most films need TWO to keep the chain going.  And I need it here to make the right total for the year, so I guess it's OUT of the February chain plans.  I'll table one other film with Anna Kendrick for February because it's more love-based, but I'm also kind of leaving it stranded now, there's no way to link out of it - but that would have still been the case if I'd saved this one for February, I'd have an extra film on the list but still no connecting link.  

So two very big factors place this film in September instead - it's taking up space on my DVR, I need to free up some room, and with Anna Kendrick with the only star actor in the film, it needs to go between two other films with her in them.  Problem solved, for now, anyway.  Anna Kendrick carries over from "Rocket Science".  

THE PLOT: A young woman trapped in an abusive relationship becomes the unwitting participant in an intervention staged by her two closest friends. 

AFTER: It's a very curious film, because the abuse depicted (or rather, mostly NOT depicted) is mostly emotional and psychological, over time, and thus it's harder for the audience to envision than physical abuse, or outright stalking, or other things seen in such films as "The Boy Next Door" or "Sleeping with the Enemy" or even "Swimfan".  How do you depict something that you can't see outright?  You have to resort to a form of "tell, don't show" which is somewhat counter to the rules of filmmaking, a very visual medium.  So as a result there may be people confused in the audience, unable to see the abuse at all, and left wondering what the fuss was all about. 

So you may have to dig a little deeper here to see it, but it's abuse in the form of control, and manipulation through words and emotions, but once you see it, you can't un-see it.  Alice's boyfriend advises her to not eat potato chips, for example, because they're "full of saturated fats" and she'll regret it when she steps on the scale the next morning. Not cool, because he's manage to assault both her freedom to eat whatever she wants AND make her self-conscious about her weight, which could trigger an eating disorder. (Note: this effect can be amplified if you JUST watched a movie with Anna Kendrick made in 2007 when she was only 22 years old and hadn't yet been told by casting directors to lose ten pounds. Not that she looked fat in "Rocket Science"...but who knows, maybe she just changed her eating habits over 17 years.)

It's also a little weird when her two best friends are the ones who have more problems with her boyfriend's attitude than SHE does herself. Neither Tess nor Sophie seem to be in a relationship themselves, so it's possible that they just don't know what they're talking about, or they don't understand what it means to BE in a long-term relationship, that it takes compromise and some give-and-take and sometimes putting the other person's needs ahead of your own.  But Sophie knows the effects of an eating disorder when she sees it, and Tess gets nothing but flak from Alice when she tries to be the center of attention on her own birthday trip (how DARE she!).

SO what's really going on here, is Alice in abusive relationship or not?  Again, the movie has chosen "tell" over "show" but for the first half of this 90 minute film, it's also chosen to do neither, so we're left wondering what exactly is going on. (See also: "Women Talking".). I guess someone felt they couldn't tip their hand too soon here, or the suspense and mystery would be over and you might stop watching.  

The first indication we have that something is wrong is the fact that Alice lied about the nature of her trip, she told her boyfriend Simon it was a work trip, not just a week with her two closest girl friends at a cabin, to celebrate Tess's birthday.  The implication here is that if she had told him the truth, he never would have let her go, and that's a red flag if ever there was one, that he feels he needs to be in control of her, and she doesn't feel free to have personal time away from him.  But then lying about the trip is a worse sin, especially if Simon checks the social media of her friends and finds out that he's been lied to, which will result in him texting at her, calling her repeatedly and then showing up at the cabin himself without notice.  

Some reviewers apparently questioned the side-plot here, which is about a woman missing in the woods, Alice at one point joins the search party instead of spending time with her friends, and she checks out an abandoned cottage, but really, the side-plot seems to go nowhere.  Except that it serves as a reminder of the potential cosquences of a controlling relationship, it's possible that the missing woman was killed by her own controlling boyfriend when she wouldn't follow his rules or didn't want to be manipulated any more. So it represents a possible future for Alice if she doesn't find a way out of this relationship or start to take back control of her life in some way.  

Here's what I think is really going on here, according to my theory about relationships - Simon is a successul artist, with gallery shows and everything, and I'm not sure if Alice has a job, so in essence Simon is the Alpha, and in a relationship there can only be one Alpha.  Now I'm not saying all men are Alphas and all women are Betas, but it does still happen.  But also there are relationships with female Alphas and male Betas, that happens too.  Two females, where one is the Alpha, or two men where one is the Alpha, sure, but what seems impossible to maintain is two Alphas together in a relationship, that's destined to fall apart at some point.  Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, both Alphas so they just can't seem to stay together for more than 2 years at a time, there's a case in point.  Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, both Alphas, and for many, many other celebrity couples, I'm betting that's part of the problem.  The longest running celebrity couples are one where someone takes the Beta role, like Eva Mendes to Ryan Gosling, or Joanne Woodward to Paul Newman.  At least there's a CHANCE of long-term success when the Alpha role is assumed by only one person, male or female.  I think Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick kind of take turns being the Alpha, career-wise, that's pretty smart. 

I think of a relationship as a car, and there can only be one driver at a time - the other person is still in the front seat, just as a passenger.  They can look up directions, they can control the radio, but only one person can drive the car, there's no co-driver position available. Some people are natural Alphas, some call themselves type-A, and generally speaking they're the more motivated or successful ones, and if they're in a relationship, they tend to be with a Beta, or they may hook up with Alphas, but the relationships with the Betas tend to last longer.  Look, I'm comfortable as a Beta, there's nothing that says a Beta can't have a job and earn some money and enjoy some moderate success, the standard-bearer is probably Doug Emhoff, husband of vice-president Kamala Harris.  He's a lawyer, a dad, he seems happy and fulfilled in most respects, but come on, Kamala is clearly the Alpha, and that's OK. Compare that with Bill and Hillary Clintons, both total Alphas, so there's going to be some friction there and competition as well. How and why they're still married, with all of Bill's affairs, I don't know, so they've either worked something out or Hillary would not divorce him for career reasons, that would look even worse for her than staying together and forgiving him, at least in some circles, but staying together and not really BEING together isn't a good look either.

So this, I think, is what's happening in "Alice, Darling", Simon is the acclaimed artist and he's the Alpha in the relationship.  Alice is content with being the Beta, but it's an unsettling thing for her, because Simon is quite a bit over the line when it comes to being in control.  Her two friends are Alphas themselves, but single Alphas, and they don't quite understand what it means for someone to take up a secondary position willingly. It's alien to them, so they stage this "intervention" and what's really bothering them is that they feel Alice should be an Alpha like them, but hey, maybe it's just not in her nature, it's now how she sees herself. So naturally there's a conflict between who she's has settled on being and who she COULD be, given enough time as a single person.  But then she'd also need to be successful at some profession to be a true Alpha, and that's not in the cards for everyone, either.  OK, so she shouldn't be with Simon, I'll concede that point because he's an asshole as well as an Alpha, but then, what comes next, what should she do and who should she be?  This may be a lot tougher for her to figure out, just saying. 

The book that Alice finds and reads for a bit in this movie is "Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf, and that's another clue for the relationship puzzle here.  Part of the plot of that book is the central character, Clarissa Dalloway, who wonders at the beginning of the story if she chose the right husband, but by the end after learning that the enigmatic and demanding Peter Walsh, who she did not marry, is secretly broke and her husband, the boring but reliable Richard, is not. She turned down the Alpha Peter to marry the Beta, Richard, and thus she was able to become the Alpha in her relationship, and she's in a much better situation. Lessons learned, now Alice just needs to do the same, get the Alpha Simon out of her life and become her own Alpha, maybe find a Beta to marry. Or not. 

Again, the film can't really explain this viewpoint very well visually, it has to rely on metaphor like depicting her under water and being frantic and unable to breathe, but then surfacing and getting air again for the first time in a while.  The same metaphor that was used in the Kelly Clarkson song "Since You've Been Gone", where she sings "I can breathe for the first time."  That's about as deep as this one gets, unfortunately. Well, at 90 minutes long at least it won't take up too much of your time. 

Also starring Kaniehtiio Horn (last seen in ("The Hummingbird Project"), Charlie Carrick, Wunmi Mosaku (last seen in "Deadpool & Wolverine"), Mark Winnick, Daniel Stolfi (last seen in "Little Italy"), Carolyn Fe (last seen in "Mother!"), Gordon Harper, Viviana Zarrillo, Ethan Mitchell, James M. Jenkinson (last seen in "Fahrenheit 451"), Lindsay Leese (last seen in "The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio"), Farah Merani. 

RATING: 4 out of 10 olives spilled on the ground (did he have to buy so MANY?)

Rocket Science

Year 16, Day 260 - 9/16/24 - Movie #4,845

BEFORE: All right, it's Monday so I'm back on back-to-school stuff.  This makes so much more sense than watching this film on a weekend day, right?  Adding that extra film ("Ophelia") did the trick, and now I know that I've got enough slots to make it to Christmas, so that was a fine choice, to drop that film in at the last second.  Now my last step to make sure my chain is good is to start with tonight's film and follow the links myself, through IMDB pages to make sure my chain is good - AND that's a big fail. It turns out that I'm using Steve Coulter as a link at the end of September, and I accidentally included films with two DIFFERENT Steve Coulters. Yes, there are two actors who share that name, which I thought wasn't supposed to happen, like one needed to add a middle initial to distinguish himself from the other one, like Michael B. Jordan did, also Michael J. Fox when he joined the actor's union, there was another Michael Fox already registered.  SO, OK, I have to drop one film because it's the WRONG Steve Coulter who has a role in it, do you want to guess which of the four films with Steve Coulters I was most looking forward to watching?  The one I have to drop, of course.

But it's all right, I only need to add one more, and as I was taking my journey through the IMDB pages from here to Christmas, I spotted another animated film I can add, "Kung Fu Panda 4", I already was doing an animated section this month, this one will slide right in perfectly, then I still have the right number of movies in total, 300 for the year.  Just 55 to go at this point. 

Denis O'Hare carries over from "Infinite Storm".  

THE PLOT: Looking for answers to life's big questions, a stuttering boy joins his high school debate team. 

AFTER: This is a high-school film from 2007, and I'd really never heard of it until some time last year when I put it on my list. I had been airing on one of the premiums, HBO or Cinemax maybe, but it's not airing any more, but it's still available On Demand, I guess they just aired it too much but they can't quite seem to delete it from the platform completely.  There's just something about it, and I've really had this feeling ever since "Divergent", it's a kind of feeling that these are the kind of movies that you would only watch after you'd been watching 300 movies a year for the last 15 or 16 years.  Do you know what I mean?  Probably not, because nobody else is crazy enough or obsessive enough to watch this many movies in a row.  Like, I'm at movie critic level based on how many films I've seen since 2009.  And sure, there are absolutely movies I had to watch in Year 1 of the project, then I thought, well, of course in Year 2 I'll watch the films I didn't get to in Year 1, and so on.  Repeat that process 15 times and you may find yourself scraping the bottom of the movie barrel, although I've determined that there really is no "bottom", the barrel seems infinitely deep and holds thousands and thousands of movies, most of which I will never watch, even if I keep doing this until I return to my home planet one day.

Like, what was even the GOAL here, to make a movie as quirky as "Napoleon Dynamite"?  This did come out three years later, so possibly - but come on, you just can't do it, that movie is the king of Quirk and its success and charm will never, ever be repeated.  Sure, it's not a perfect film, like eventually you notice that Jon Heder is like 35 (and the bullying teen is even older) and trying to look and act like a high-school student, and some parts fall flat or just don't work, but still that film had so much heart and such a great dance sequence that you just have to love it. "Rocket Science", not so much.

The whole premise doesn't work, it's about a kid who stutters and is so filled with nervousness and anxiety that he can't even order the lunch he wants in the school cafeteria.  The word "pizza" refuses to come out of his mouth, so he has to eat fish.  NITPICK POINT: Did he somehow also lose the ability to POINT?  Can't he nod his head to indicate "NO" when the lunch lady offers him fish?  Jeez, it's simple, there are two choices for lunch, if she offers fish and he nods his head side-to-side, with a gesture that everyone already understands, then he'll get his pizza.  If he can't even work this out, then really, I have to assume that he doesn't want help.

What's worse is that the effects of his stuttering are magnified here because everyone else talks a mile a minute during the debates. How can the judges even understand them and judge them if they're all talking so fast?  Anna Kendrick's character is the worst offender - and yes, I understand there is a scene where they're quick-tutoring the new debaters and they've sped things up so that an 8-minute speech will only take 30 seconds, but isn't the point of teaching people stuff for them to, you know, understand it?  "Look, I know this is your first time watching a high-school debate, so to make things harder to understand, we're going to cover a 30-minute process in five minutes, and you won't be able to distinguish the words spoken in our arguments."  No, that's just not going to help, you need to SLOW things DOWN when people are learning, not speed them up.  

Hal Hefner is only trying to understand life, and if that's not possible, he just wants to be able to get through the day at high school.  But for someone with a massive stuttering problem to join the debate team, well, how's that going to work.  Short answer - it's not going to work. But he's already fallen in like with the girl who asked him to join the team, and she keeps saying that there's a plan in place for him to be able to debate stuff, and then never gets around to telling him what that plan is.  It turns out that she's some kind of active recruiter for debating, and she gets other people to join the team, even if they're no good. I can't explain this, except to think that if she's captain of the team and more people join, then her school club is bigger than others and maybe they get a larger practice space or something? Because I can't think of a reason why she would get people to join the debate team who are not good at it.

Look, I was on math team myself, and we wanted other people to join the team, but only if they were good at math, that's kind of the point.  I would imagine that the school's football team would prefer to have people sign up who are good at the football, same for baseball and tennis and chess club, and would you want someone to join the hockey team if they couldn't ice skate?  No, of course not.  So this makes no sense here. 

After Hal kisses her awkwardly, though she didn't seem to mind it at the time, shortly after that she transfers to a prep school and is obviously dating someone on her NEW debate team, so, yeah, umm, what exactly happened there?   Did she not want to date Hal?  Or did she want to date Hal but she was afraid that would negatively affect her social status?  I guess that's possible, but it's still all a bit odd.  The only other possible explanation is that she was left hanging when her previous boyfriend/teammate suddenly stopped talking in the middle of the state Debate finals, and umm, didn't start again?  So they lost the match because he suddenly ran out of things to say, or didn't want to debate any more?  I don't think that's how debates work, you can't just stop, nobody just stops.  

Anyway, without Ginny, Hal has to track down that guy, Ben, not to get him back with Ginny or to get Ben to finish high school and get out of working at the dry cleaners, but because he somehow knows that only Ben can coach him, be the Mickey to his Rocky Balboa, and somehow figure out a way for him to speak in front of other people, and somehow enter the state debate finals as a home-schooled kid and win, and then somehow Ginny will come back to him.  OK, it's nice to have goals but absolutely none of that is likely to happen, especially when the solution to Hal's stuttering is to sing everything to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".  OK, that's not how debates work, and that's not how people get over stuttering, I'm fairly sure. 

So I don't know, I can't take anything in this film seriously, I think it just exists to be weird and quirky and live in a space that's somewhere between "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Superbad".  But I'm glad that I'm burning off this film here and I'm not saving it for February, because it's NOT a romantic film, it's kind of like the opposite of one.  Hal's parents split up around the same time that Ben loses his voice and Ginny loses her debate finals, there's some kind of implication that everything is connected, I guess, only that's not possible.  Then at the end of the film, Hal sees his father again for the first time in a while and seeks advice about when life stops sucking, he's sure that happens some time after high school, only WHEN?  His father's advice is that it may never happen, life is going to continue to suck, but at least when you get older you're more used to it.  Gee, thanks, now I feel a whole lot worse. 

The title is very misleading here, because you'd think this would be a film about a high school's rocketry club, only it's not, it's about a debate team at a New Jersey high school.  Last night's film had a similar misleading title, because the storm depicted in the film was NOT infinite, it ended at some point.  The title instead came from something a character said about looking up into the stars and seeing an infinite storm of beauty, so there you go.  Here Hal complains to his father that life and love shouldn't be "rocket science", but that's all part of life sucking and all, you never really get to figure out love and sex and the meaning of life, at least not while you're still in school.

"Rocket Science" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007, then was on the festival circuit for a good long run - yeah, it feels like a Sundance-y film, something that would do well at festivals - but then of course it tanked in theaters during a limited theatrical run.  There's nothing overly offensive about it, but neither does it end on a positive note or present a world in which problems can be solved or overcome just by being in love with someone else.  Maybe that's OK, but watching a film where things just don't get resolved doesn't really thrill me, it's just a little too much like life, and as we just determined, life never stops sucking. 

Also starring Reece Thompson (last seen in "The Perks of Being a Wallflower"), Anna Kendrick (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Nicholas D'Agosto, Vincent Piazza (last seen in "Jersey Boys"), Aaron Yoo (last seen in "The Namesake"), Margo Martindale (last seen in "Cocaine Bear'), Michael Kusnir, Josh Kay, Maury Ginsberg (last seen in "The Week Of"), Utkarsh Ambudkar (last seen in "Ride Along 2"), Lisbeth Bartlett (last seen in "Suspect"), Virginia House, Marilyn Yoblick (last seen in "Happy Tears"), Emily Ginnona, Dionne Audain (last seen in "People Places Things"), Dan De Luca (last seen in "Rustin"), Steve Park (last seen in "Asteroid City"), John Patrick Barry, Jane Beard (last seen in "Species II"), Herb Merrick, Carol Florence, Betsy Hogg, Brandon Thane Wilson, David DeBoy (last seen in "Jackie"), Andrew Collie, Huong D. Nguyen, Susan Duvall, Elisabeth Noone (last seen in "Superhero Movie"), Roland Gomez, Lee Sellars (last seen in "Tár"), Joel Marsh Garland (last seen in "The Bounty Hunter"), Tyson Sullivan (last seen in "Heist"), Tia Latrell

with the voice of Dan Cashman and a cameo from Jonah Hill (last sene in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"). 

RATING: 4 out of 10 pieces of unspecified fish

Infinite Storm

Year 16, Day 259 - 9/15/24 - Movie #4,844

BEFORE: September is half over, but it's really time to start thinking about the end of the year, how am I going to end this Movie Year?  After Halloween I don't have a plan, I don't even have a concept of a plan.  Well, that's got to change today, I decided, I picked the two Christmas movies I want to see the most and started linking backwards, also found the fastest way from my last October film to my ONE Thanksgiving movie, and it's only three steps, so it looks like I'll be taking almost all of November off from movies.  Well, some sacrifice needs to be made.  So I linked a little forward from Thanksgiving, and what do you know?  The two chains met in the middle. Now I didn't hit the number spot-on, I was short by two - but there's time to add some filler, one more October movie that's not really horror, and I was kind of on the fence about it, and steal another Mel Gibson movie from that chain over there, and BOOM, I'm right on the money.  

Now, things could still change, I'm not locked in, but the NUMBER of films is locked in, so from now on if I want to add something at the last minute, something else has to be dropped, like the middle film from a three-film chain, that's exactly WHY I try to get more than two films with the same actor together, it gives me a little flexibility when things get too crowded.  SO now I have a plan, there's still time to tinker with it, but I know I"m going to make it to Christmas (there's a bonus THIRD Christmas movie I was able to drop in once I had these links) so there you go, let's get those Halloween and/or Christmas decorations up and start moving toward the end of 2024.  Oh, right, the election.  Well I"m not going to watch "Swing Vote" or anything dumb like that, I'll just make sure my schedule is clear to spend a few hours in line on Election Day, but other than that, let's get ready for All Hallow's Christmas Eve! 

Tonight's film is about someone stuck in winter weather, maybe that will help get me in the mindset, though it is 80 degrees out, and we haven't seen a solid snowstorm in NYC for a couple winters now.  Anyway, Naomi Watts is really having a good year, she carries over again from "Ophelia" and I'll see her again in October, hint hint. 

THE PLOT: When a climber gets caught in a blizzard, she encounters a stranded stranger and must get them both down the mountain before nightfall. 

AFTER: It's a very simple film, really, set on New Hampshire's Mount Washington, which is the highest peak in the northeast United States. I remember going there at least once as a teenager, and those bumper stickers that say "This car climbed Mt. Washington" were always prevalent in Massachusetts, where I grew up.  So I always wondered, if you can drive up the mountain, why on earth would anyone want to hike up to the top?  Maybe the car can only take you so far?  

Anyway, this is the true story of Pam Bales, a search-and-rescue volunteer who frequently climbs the mountain, just in case someone gets hurt or stranded on the mountain or needs medical assistance.  And one day during a terrible sudden storm she herself falls in a crevasse, it's quite a chore for her to get herself free, and she's a professional.  Then later she encounters a man near the top of the mountain who's not wearing proper clothing, and he's in sneakers, not hiking boots. Worse, he's zoned out and possibly frost-bitten, and seems to be willing to just sit there as the storm rolls in.  Pam tries to help him but he's unresponsive, and then even when he wakes up due to her rubbing his limbs to warm them up, he thwarts every attempt she makes to get him down the mountain to safety.  If this is one of those "What could possibly go wrong" storylines, the answer is everything, everything goes wrong. 

He's got frostbite, he moves intentionally in the wrong direction, he jumps off a small cliff and hurts his leg.  It's almost like he doesn't want to be rescued. No, it's exactly like he doesn't want to be rescued. Can you imagine a firetruck coming to your burning house and you do everything in your power to stop them from putting out the fire?  It makes no sense, but she only knows she has to get him down below the treeline before dark, and then they can figure out the rest later. 

During the ordeal, Pam has a number of flashbacks that don't seem to make sense, they show her on a snowy day with two young daughters, brushing their hair and watching as they make heart designs on the fogged-up windows.  But we saw Pam waking up and getting ready for work, it sure looked like she lived alone.  Eventually it's explained that there was a tragedy in her life, and so she seems to be a grief-stricken survivor, and so maybe she understands a little more about a suicidal hiker than others might.  So the story isn't just about saving someone's life, it's (eventually) about learning what brought them up to that mountain on that day in the first place. 

That's it, that's the whole story, figuring out why people act they way they do when they're plagued with grief.  Perhaps Pam has this job for the same reason, it gave her something to do while she was working through her own grief, it's her own form of therapy and if she can save even just one person, then it's worth doing.  And maybe this encounter with another troubled soul gave her more insight into her own situation, so in the end they don't really know who saved who.  

They didn't film the movie in New Hampshire, though, they filmed it in Slovenia - so anyone who's familiar with Mt. Washington would know immediately that it looks wrong here, because that's not the right mountain.  Apparently only hard-core mountaineers went to see this movie, it took in only $750,000 and cost twice that to make. Well, I guess that's one way to make sure your movie ends up on Hulu and not Netflix, it's kind of damaged goods.  Really, I just came here for the linking, I needed to end this Naomi Watts chain with something that would get me back to school-based films for September, as it was way too early to link to a horror movie like "The Ring".  But don't worry, I'm gonna get there, just by another way.  

Also starring Billy Howie (last seen in "The Seagull"), Denis O'Hare (last seen in "Lizzie'), Parker Sawyers (last seen in "The Mummy" (2017)), Eliot Sumner (last seen in "No Time to Die'), Joshua Rollins, Arya Petric, Lina Kolenko.

RATING: 5 out of 10 pairs of socks